Jermaine Harris
Jermaine Harris is the protagonist of the second Subterraneans installment dubbed Subterraneans: New York City. Profile Physical Appearance Jermaine is shown to be a afro-latino male with a light skin complexion standing at a height of 6'0" and a mesomorphic build. He has the appearance of a man who takes great care of their physical looks. His face is very youthful and has a round appearance, he doesn't have many wrinkles or acne related scarring. Because he took great care of his appearance, Jermaine had a very trendy style to him. He styled his black hair in a short dread-lock style with his sides and back styled in a brook fade. It is to be noted that because of a childhood ambush, Jermaine has a permanent slit on his left eyebrow along with a nasty scar. He also has a full goatee that is nicely trimmed and clean cut. Attire Being a figure of '90s New York City, Jermaine kept himself invested with what was particularly popular at the time. His more common appearance has him appear with a light denim blue jacket with slim-straight cut similarly blue jeans, a white long sleeve henley shirt, and white Air Force 1s. Jermaine also is known for wearing a black and white patterned paisley bandanna across his forehead or on his neck. If he affiliates himself with the Howard Avenue Vamps, he dons a number of black and red related outfits. One of his more recognizable garments is his torn black denim vest with various Vamps patches, a red designer hoodie, black jeans, red paisley bandanna across the forehead and Banned OG cut Air Jordan 1s. When on duty as an officer, he wears a black pea coat with a white button up underneath and a black loosened tie. Personality Jermaine is a somewhat hard to describe character because of how well he hides his personality and how he easily shifts his attitude based on the people he's surrounded by. Jermaine is a very adaptive person. He does whatever he can to fit into any position he assigns himself to be apart of. He's went through many phases in his life from being a criminal youth to being a stern undercover detective. A trait that he retains regardless of his acting is that he is a very perceptive individual. He could read people like a book and can pick off traits of strength and weakness with every person he associates himself with. He takes his work incredibly seriously and is somewhat of a perfectionist. If there's a job to be done, he's your man. He becomes dissociated with his work and his personal life, often living like he has two personalities. Jermaine has a deep seeded loathing of criminal activity and gang sub-culture. He blames the untimely death of his father on the drug epidemic and its effect on gangs during the early '80s. In his mind, he feels that gang culture not only drags the reputation of hard working blacks but it ruins the lives of the perfectly innocent. As he progressed with his police work, he would find that criminality and gangs weren't as black and white as he previously perceived. Because of how he was raised, Jermaine has a lot of pride in his identity of being a black American. His family was heavily invested in the civil rights movement and raised Jermaine to be no different. His childhood hero was Malcolm X, some one whom his own father had met and spoken to. Despite seeming moral, Jermaine is more than willing to do whatever he needs to make his ends meet. He is not above killing with out interrogation and arrest. He is willing to bend the law to achieve greater peace making, and will do anything to ensure his job as an officer is still intact. He can be reckless and quite cruel to any who oppose him and his methods on either side of the law. He subconsciously loves his power and thrives off the idea of being above the law; yet he always maintains the idea that he's better than the actual outlaws of the world despite working quite similarly to how they do. While he may seem corrupt, he is not. The world he works in is broken and the way he sees it is that you have to adapt to the criminal mindset in order to extinguish it. Biography Upbringing and Background Jermaine grew up in a blue collar hard working household of former civil rights activists. He was born in Brownsville Brooklyn. His father Andre Harris was a well regarded carpenter and devout Baptist and his mother Jasmin was a Dominican migrant who moved to the United States with her family at a young age, she would eventually become a Spanish and literature teacher. Andre and Jasmin had a very loving relationship as both met in a local church during their late teens. Andre was known to help out their local church and caught the attention of Jasmin during bible study. Andre and Jasmin eventually settled down in their mid twenties. As of June of 1963, they gave birth to their first and only child Jermaine. They instilled Jermaine with a sense of honor and self-respect. They taught him to always be proud of himself and work twice as hard as everyone else from an early age. Despite the fact that the Harris' had a low income, they did everything they could do to ensure Jermaine could get a good education from private studies and some home schooling from Jermaine's own mother. Because of how intelligent Jermaine was and his light-skinned complexion, he often suffered bullying from other blacks in his neighborhood and would often be forced out of local basketball courts or robbed of what little money he carried at all times. Because of the harassment his son suffered through, Andre paid for taekwando classes to instruct his son on how to fight but to also teach him discipline. Things would work out fine for Jermaine as he was now able to defend himself, but he felt that with his newfound combat skills it was his duty to protect those in similar situations to the ones he suffered with as a kid. Jermaine would often break fights between fellow students at basketball courts or outside of schools. It gave him an elder brother image to many students who suffered with bullying or harassment, this behavior of his was not known to his parents nor the greater half of his school staff. Nobody could touch Jermaine until he made the near fatal mistake of interrupting a gang fight in his first year of high school Jermaine stopped to go help fellow gym classmate Shaun Knight. Unbeknownst to Jermaine, Shaun was a jack boy for the Howard Ave Vamps, a dangerous gang connected to the drug game present during the early '80s. Eternally grateful for saving his life, Shaun Knight (street name Templar) ensured that no matter where Jermaine went, Shaun would be there to protect him from anyone seeking to "fuck with you". Jermaine laughed at the initial gesture due to the fact that Jermaine saved Shaun. The two would become close friends and would often be seen together in and out of school. Jermaine helped Shaun with his studies and Shaun taught Jermaine the ways of the streets and how to protect himself better. Shaun was two years older than Jermaine, he greatly respected how intelligent Jermaine was for some one his age and because of that he refused to let Jermaine become tied to his gang activities. Things were fine until summer of their freshman year when rival gang members found Jermaine walking home at night returning from a basketball game with Shaun. Normally Shaun walks with Jermaine home, but this night was different. Shaun had split ways with Jermaine because he had some business to attend to at another neighborhood. As Jermaine was walking home some members of the Flatbush Mercenaries (rival gang to the Howard Ave Vamps) pulled up. Two men with ski masks on with some gang patches and camo pattern vests approached Jermaine with their hands in their pockets. They asked where Jermaine was going and whether or not he remembered who they were. Initially trying to resolve the problem by being patient and dismissive, Jermaine kept trying to walk away only to be cornered by said men every time he walked forward. The men demanded Jermaine to run them everything he had on him. Jermaine complied but before he could reach into his pockets, one of the men pulled out a gun and whipped Jermaine across the head with it. The two men would proceed to beat the living hell out of Jermaine, only to stop when they heard police sirens from up the block. Before going away, one of the attackers pulls up his balaclava and reveals his face to Jermaine holding his badly beaten head up. He holds a gun to Jermaines head and spits on his face before telling him that should he ever tell the police or anyone else about this incident that he would "kill everything you've ever loved and then personally kill you myself". After the men ran and the sirens drew closer, Jermaine struggled to stand up. Jermaine continued to walk home, angry and fuming with a desire to have revenge but at the same time terrified with the reality that he came close to death. When he arrived home later than usual, his parents were initially furious only to turn on the lights and see all the wounds and blood leaking from Jermaine. Jasmin began to cry hysterically as she held her son in her arms, wiping away the blood on his face and tending to his wounds. Andre was boiling in anger, wanting justice so he called the police only to be ignored and disrespected by an officer who felt like this case was beneath his duty. From Bucktown to the ATL Andre was enraged by his city's lack of response to his son's situation, he went to church the following Sunday and preached to his church that "Lord forgive those boys who hurt my son. I know it is not in their best interest to damage the community, they are lost like you and me and I hope God finds those boys before they lose themselves to the criminal system or worse." It took a lot of time for Jermaine to even talk about this traumatic situation to his parents, but despite his silence, the situation was well known across the neighborhood; eventually reaching Jermaine's best friend Shaun. Shaun immediately tried to reach out to Jermaine by going to his apartment. He would try multiple times a day to get Jermaine to talk about what happened to him and how he's been hearing rumors about a fight he had. Jermaine dismissed everything until he eventually broke down about having a gun held to his face and nearly being murdered. Shaun quietly nodded his head and hugged Jermaine promising him that the people who did that to him will suffer. Two weeks later, Shaun and some of the Vamps would pull up to East Flatbush and have a massive shoot out in front of the Holy Cross Cemetary. The gun fight would ensue around the late hours of the night with the two gangs firing aimlessly at each other. Andre Harris was in the area aiding a family in funeral plans where much to his surprise the gun fire started going off. Andre did what he could to help the family inside the church to take cover from the stray bullets. Unfortunately for Andre, one of the bullets would shoot through the window and go right through his neck. Andre was dead within minutes, the family he was aiding did everything they could to alert the police. After thirty minutes of gun fire, the police would soon arrive and try to control the situation. The result of the shoot out was multiple Vamps wounded, three Vamp members shot dead, and four Mercs pronounced dead. The shoot out came to a close as the police swarmed the cemetery, two of the identified bodies were that of Taymore Dray and Marquis Tyson. The same two men that threatened to kill Jermaine. Later the police would find the bodies of several bystanders, one of them namely being Andre. Shaun escaped the police successfully and would lie low until the heat cleared off his gang and himself. What ensued the day after would change the life of not only Jermaine and his family, but Shaun and his gang as well. With Andre being pronounced dead, the community would pitch in to do a grassroots funeral for Andre and those who were affected by the shoot out. Jermaine was destroyed after losing his father and his mother would close herself off entirely. Jasmin would get in contact with Andre's parents in Atlanta, hoping that they would take care of Jermaine while she goes back to the Dominican Republic to cope with the pain she is going through. Andre's parents agreed and she would send her son to Atlanta where he would remain for the following seven years. Path of Justice Nothing felt right to Jermaine in Atlanta, it was a city he could never adapt to fully. Jermaine's grandparents were the very strict and religious type, they struggled with sharing emotions and would often scold Jermaine for being what they considered a delinquent. That being said, Jermaine's grandparents mourned the loss of their son Andre and would ensure that Jermaine would not make the same mistakes as his father did. His grandparents would make Jermaine join religious congregations at church, cleaned his image up by dressing him in suits and formal wear, taught him how to present himself as a mature young man, and even motivated him to make something of himself. His academics improved and he would even motivate himself to be in top physical shape. Even though his image was clean cut and he had matured gracefully, Jermaine remained angry at the world for what had happened to his father. The one thing he would consistently notice during his time in Atlanta was all the crime that surrounded him. People being mugged, gun shots at night, various drug deals, and signs of human trafficking. It all made Jermaine sick. He felt disgusted with how things were in Atlanta and was motivated to join law enforcement. In his late teens he would obsess about criminal law and the psychology behind criminals, he would spend nights at libraries studying and when he was outside of the library he would watch the behavior of criminals on the street. Jermaine graduated high school as a gifted scholar with ample college opportunities because of his performance in various classes, but Jermaine never perused college despite his grandparents wishes. As soon as he graduated, Jermaine immediately pursued law enforcement as an Atlanta police officer. It took time, but eventually he was hired. He had excelled in the academy and was seen to have great understanding of the criminal justice system. Jermaine spent the next four years busting drug deals and arresting various criminals in Atlanta. He was a well respected officer with great work ethic, but at the sacrifice of any true social life. After he was granted the rank of detective, Jermaine had specifically requested he be moved back to New York to work a criminal case he was focused on since he joined the department. His chief was initially skeptical but after some convincing he had agreed to speak to the New York police department in hopes of transferring Jermaine over. Because of his decorated record in Atlanta, he was accepted and Jermaine moved back to New York. Category:Protagonists Category:Major Characters Category:Police Officers Category:Characters